Identity Manifestation in the Iraqi Novel- Sinan Intiwan's "O Mariam" as an Exemplar- A Deconstructive Study

Abstract

This study attempts to analyze the novel (O Mariam) by the novelist Sinan Intwan using deconstruction criticism which is considered a post-structuralism thought; a criticism which moved from philosophy to literature, making use of the thoughts of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. The proponents of this theory have criticized all the classical critical approaches which were interested in things outside the text, and the textual approaches-structuralism, semiotics, stylistics-whose prime concern was with the text itself in order to reveal its treasures. Deconstruction advocates search through the text for anything absent or delayed which forms the unstable meaning of the text because the text which has been deconstructed can be deconstructed again to give a new meaning. The study seeks to reveal what the text hides of the dualities that are in contrast with what is apparent . The paper does not claim that there is no meaning other than the one it attempts to confirm out of the dualities contained in the text. The analysis of meaning, it should be observed, relies on certain time and place; and thus there exists no stable meaning in the single text. The meaning is just a spectrum if not a falsity. The meaning has no reality except in its departure and delay and this is what the deconstructive criticism attempts to study.